A Rapist By His Own Admission, Polanski Still a Hero to Some

Last week, the Swiss government made the decision not to turn over film director Roman Polanski, who is currently wanted in the United States for skipping out on a hearing that would have determined his sentence for statutory rape.

There’s a documentary called “Wanted and Desired” that chronicles the media circus surrounding the accusations and resulting conviction. There was a lot of mismanagement, most of it centering around a judge who was more concerned with his own perceived fame and ego than with administering justice.

I understand that there was some legal unfairness and double-talk at the time of his conviction, and that many people had gone against their word. However, what it comes down to as far as I’m concerned is that at worst he was perhaps unfairly (but not illegally) cheated out of a deal that he never should have received in the first place given the severity of his transgression.

Even though the victim has forgiven him twenty plus years later, that doesn’t change the facts of the case: in 1977 he drugged and raped her when she was only thirteen years old.

Which is what’s especially maddening about the defense he gets from so many in Hollywood (and some from right in our own back yard). There’s an insinuation that what he did wasn’t all that wrong, that he may not have been aware of her age and that in the words of Whoopi Goldberg it wasn’t “RAPE rape;” as if sex with a child, if consensual, is okay and forgivable for a person if they didn’t serve the proper time for it.

Geimer the year the incident happened.

And if you have any doubts as to the disturbing nature of the incident, read the testimony of Geimer herself. Also, look at the picture to the right, and tell me that’s not a child. There was no mistaking her as a little girl, and not as a woman at the age of consent.

Polanski knew what he was doing was wrong, and he did it anyway. Then, and now, he is unwilling to face the consequences of those actions.

I’m under no misapprehensions about the nature of celebrity in our society. Since the inception of the Hollywood star system our society has granted permission and forgiveness to celebrities, both legally and culturally, that we under no circumstances grant to the everyday working man. For the longest time, though, I still thought there were some crimes for which that wouldn’t apply. Polanski and the excuses others make for him have shown that not to be the case.

If a Schenectady man who works as a school teacher were to drug and have sex with a 13-year-old girl, he’d rightfully be sentenced and viewed as reprehensible. With Polanski it’s okay, because he directed “Chinatown.”